The Harriet Beecher Stowe Society will be sponsoring two panels at the upcoming AmericanLiterature Association (ALA) Conference, held May 22-25, 2008 in San Francisco. Moreinformation about the conference is available here:http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/ala2/

More information about the Harriet Beecher Stowe Society and our panels is available here:www.stowesociety.org

"Harriet Beecher Stowe and 19th Century Religious Communities"

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Society invites papers that explore intersections between Stoweâ€™slife or works and the activities, ideals, domestic re-imaginings, philosophies, etc. of nineteenthcentury religious communities. Much work has been done on the family as a site of privateemotional training or as an alternative space to the public sphere, but where do communitiessuch as Utopian communities, the Shakers, local church congregations, or even travelingrevivalists fit into our understanding of gender, of concepts of public and private, or of relationalpossibilities in the nineteenth century? Does Stowe have consistent responses to religiouscommunities as extended families or alternatives to the family? Does she differentiate betweencertain religious communities, such as the Quakers involved in abolitionist work, and others? Doreligious meetings constitute communities, or are they ephemeral gatherings of individuals?How does she give voice to such â€œcommunitiesâ€ â€“ does she prefer to use techniques that displaymultiple voices or a single voice and why? Are religious communities reflective of prevailingviews of gender and/or race or do they provide spaces in which to experiment with prevailingviews of national identity? These are only suggestions of possible directions in which to take thiscall. Send 400-500 word abstracts by e-mail attachment to Lisa West at lisa.west_at_drake.edu byJanuary 10, 2008.